The Brave of Fresh Blood and A Mother of Mountains
by PreciousCosmos
Summary: Mora makes Fremy a promise, and Hans happens to give Rolonia the assurance she needs. Adlet just spends most of his time taking a strong man's power nap.


Fremy held back tears as she pushed the tonic down Adlet's iron-tinged throat with her tongue. She knew by his malleability that his consciousness had already slipped away. Leaving her forehead on his, she cried through gritted teeth. But she also knew she was only indulging herself, so she backed off and set to stopping the wounds on his torso from bleeding. He still hadn't stopped shaking either. With no way to keep him warm, she pulled his mask over his nose hoping it would keep the chilled air out of his lungs.

The yells of her companions hunting down the seventh echoed into the distance. In the silence, something deep inside - a feeling she thought only bloomed for own traitorous kind now - burned up behind her eyes and to the tip of her trigger finger. Night fell deep into the early morning hours, and still she remained there guarding him. Eventually, approaching footsteps stomped behind her. In a flash, she aimed her rifle at Mora's heart.

The woman stopped, and the two locked distrustful gazes, silent until she casually said, "The princess evaded us, but the others are still looking for her. I came back to check on you, in case she'd doubled back." She broke eye contact to look over Adlet. "Goldof searched the temple. It's safe there. We should move hi—"

"I should kill you." Fremy tightened her grip, lifting the gun close to her eye.

"Fremy..." Mora made no sudden move. She simply wore a remorseful expression, but Fremy refused to waver.

"Shut up." She stood, protective in her position. "He's dying because of _you_." As the seventh, Nashetania would have acted on her own in time, but Mora's deception had given her the opportunity to hurt Adlet without drawing the Braves' suspicion.

Mora sighed and looked away. "I can help him. You just have to allow me to bring him to the temple." She took a step forward, but Fremy fired at her. Sensing it a second beforehand, she leapt to the side, dissolved her gauntlets, and remained still, saying, "I'm not your enemy." Fremy almost pulled the trigger again anyway, but Adlet made a soft, fitful sound. She shut her eyes in defeat and finally lowered her weapon.

On their way back, Mora carrying Adlet while Fremy took point, the phantasmal barrier vanished. Mora stared off in the temple's direction, eyebrows scrunched. "Did Goldof...?"

"She went this way!" shouted Hans, bursting from the jungle. Chamo appeared after him as Nashetania's cackle resounded through the trees.

"Chamo, what happened?" Mora said.

The child slowed to their side. "That stupid bunny girl broke the barrier when we had her cornered."

Mora clenched her free fist. "Damn it, she has a better chance of escaping now. Hans!"

"_Nya_, what?" The assassin came to a stop, though his glower showed he wasn't happy about it. "'That's enough for tonight,' huh?" he asked in a mocking tone.

"Yes. If she's deactivated the barrier, she only means to get away from us," Mora said. "I fear what could happen if we continue pursuing her." As if to make her point, giant blades from the ground nearly skewered Hans.

"Ugh, fine." He sheathed his swords and headed towards the group.

Chamo ignored their conversation, instead eyeing Adlet. "Hmm, he looks dead," she said, tapping her foxtail grass on the spot between his eyes. Mora gave her a stern look. "Well, he does," she muttered under her breath as Hans pulled Adlet's other arm over his shoulder.

Goldof waited inside the temple and, when he saw them, lowered his head in apparent shame.

"We'll go find his stuff," Hans said as he dragged the knight outside by the chest strap.

Fremy remained tense and guarded, never taking her eye off Mora as she produced some kind of crushed herbs from a bag. Her first thought was that they were poisonous and instinctively raised her gun.

Mora scoffed and said, "Would you drop that already? Look." She pinched off a bit and pressed it into a superficial cut on her forearm. A second later, the scratch closed. "I imbued it with the power of the mountains before making the journey here. It's all I have, and I was...saving it for an emergency, but this is my fault. It's the least I can do."

Fremy narrowed her eyes but, at last satisfied with the woman's intentions, set her rifle against the wall.

Mora tugged off Adlet's scarf and bandaged the gash on his face with a mother's gentleness. "Would you?" She nodded to his chest.

Fremy remembered vividly having to remove his clothing the night before. She'd felt obligation and a small amount of disgust then. 'The world's strongest man' hadn't even managed to use a hostage properly. But now she understood his actions differently. He was everything she wasn't - someone who lived to survive, and someone who faced death to protect her.

That's what he made her believe.

This time, seeing the extent of his injuries brought her pain. Grateful that he would have the healing herbs for recovery, she held him tighter than she should have. If Mora noticed as she patched up the wound on his back, she didn't say anything. For that too, Fremy was grateful.

The two watched over him until the first morning rays filtered down the corridor. There was a moment when it seemed he would awaken, but he only muttered in his sleep. She heard her name and found herself straining to understand, but she couldn't make out what he said.

"It would be best if you rested," Mora prompted.

"I'm fine."

Silent seconds passed as Mora regarded her. "I've caused you pain, as well." She leaned to see Fremy's face and said, "I'm sorry," with a look so sincere that it sent tension into Fremy's body again. She knew what that expression _didn't_ look like, having seen her mother's lies her entire life. The temple walls seemed to press in around her, so she left and didn't speak to Mora again until the Braves were ready to resume their trek into the Land of Howling Demons, a new seventh in tow.

Out of jealousy, she'd run ahead of Adlet when the new girl insisted on healing him. She should have expected the Saint of Mountains to sniff out her weakness. Mora matched her pace and said with a low voice so that the others wouldn't hear, "I should have said this to you earlier, but..." She cast a glance at Adlet and Rolonia chatting behind them. "Well, it doesn't matter."

"Make your point," Fremy prompted.

That impossibly sincere expression came back. "He will not die." Mora moved in slightly closer, continuing with conviction, "Fremy, I swear it to you. Adlet will live."

Perhaps those were words of comfort, but they only set Fremy on edge. No suspicious act after that escaped her notice.

* * *

Tgurneu's attack later that day had been too sudden. Proverbial tails - and literal in one case - tucked between their legs, the Flowers made a desperate dash for the second barrier to be encountered on their journey. At least this one would be a welcome haven rather than a prison.

Despite hefting both the dead weight of a grown man and a small child full of protesting kicks, Hans had little problem scaling the mountainside. He'd lost sight of the rest of the Flowers, but he guessed Mora and Fremy lagged behind to hold back the fiends pursuing them - _or to kill each other_; however, he did know that Goldof followed close behind him, the cow girl struggling further below.

With a grunted meow, he hopped onto the plateau. A light magenta hue like the color of his crest emanated from a narrow cave entrance a few meters before him. They'd made it within the barrier of the Eternal Flower.

He set Chamo down by a boulder. "Finally," she snapped and half-collapsed against it, panting from the mess going on in her stomach. His pointy shoulder certainly hadn't helped that, but she should be thankful she wasn't dead. Shifting his hold around Adlet's body so that the man's injured head would no longer hang upside down, Hans couldn't shake off his concern. In the solid fifteen minutes it took to reach the barrier, he would have come to already if he were okay.

Hans turned back to see if Rolonia needed help, but Goldof had already given her a hand up. "Thank you," she said. Ignoring her, he simply dropped everyone's things and found his place against the stone to continue brooding.

Hans shrugged at the knight's behavior and Rolonia's upset expression in response to it before he shuffled inside. As he went to lie Adlet on the ground, Rolonia politely halted him and flipped open a bedroll near the spring flowing from the back of the cave.

He took greater care moving their dauntless leader than he had during their escape, supporting Adlet's neck down to the thin pillow. "You idiot," he muttered with a wry smile, rocking to his haunches.

Her gloves removed, Rolonia knelt above Adlet's head and sent the power of Fresh Blood into him. After the blow he took, his nose had bled all over his face, even into his hairline, but the blood receded with the girl's touch. After a few moments, her sad expression turned to puzzled worry. Keeping one hand on his temple, she twisted to dig around for something in her pack. Pulling out a rag, she stretched the other way trying to dip it in the spring but was just out of reach. Hans took it before she removed her healing hand fully and got it the rest of the way. "Oh, thank you, uh..." She rested her now free hand back with the other.

Grinning, he supplied his name and washed off the smudges of dried blood Rolonia's ability couldn't influence.

"Thank you, Hans-san."

Finished, he folded the rag to its clean side and placed it on Adlet's forehead. "How is he?"

"I'm not sure." She angled down and patted his cheek, saying, "Ad-kun? Can you wake up?" There wasn't even a twitch in response. She shook her head. "The blood in his brain isn't telling me if he can hear us. His skull— It's bad. I don't know if I can— What if—" She sounded about ready to cry.

"I've only known him for two days, but he's survived a poke from one of _my _knives. This must be nothing for him," Hans chuckled.

In spite of her horrified look at that revelation, she replied, "But if it's not— If he— I can't heal the dead."

Though he needed no distraction from the exhilarating bind they were in, he knew that the Flowers' new healer likely did to be efficient, so he made a show of thinking then said, "Hmm. Well, as I see it, _nya_, if you're not the seventh, then you must have been chosen for a reason. I don't see why resurrection can't be it."

The shock on her face and tears in her eyes didn't go away. In fact, even more emotions such as disbelief mixed in with them. "That's ridiculous. I don't know why she would choose me, but surely the Goddess of Fate knows what's possible and what isn't."

"_Nya_! I'm just kidding. It's okay. You're with a tough lot anyway." He leaned in close to her with his hand to his mouth as though sharing a secret, whispering, "And in case you didn't hear about it, even Adlet is too hard for a Brave traitor to kill." Snickering, he snapped back with his hands up, continuing, "But don't tell him I said that. He'd simply call himself the strongest man while flinging little pieces of metal at me, _nyahihi_."

Utterly mystified by him, Rolonia could only laugh. She brushed Adlet's hair out from under the rag, her expression softening to relaxed affection. "Tha—"

"I know. You're welcome. Well, I should probably go find Mora," he said but didn't have the heart to leave just yet. And hours later, as in turn Adlet held Hans while he choked and screamed and _breathed_, Rolonia truly understood the power of Fate to put someone like her with people like these so that she could do what had never been accomplished before. The self-doubt in her own heart melted away, if even just a little.


End file.
